XT660R Heaven

Life on the road is fab...

Monday, 7 July 2014

Nevada - the last bite in the ass!!

61 miles on the map, 80 miles on the clock, it's the first day we never made our planned end point... oooh yeah!!

We've had punctures & the DRZ decided to test our mechanical skills with a random stop after a little creek crossing, it just gently died, coasting to a stop just before the final big uphill of the morning...

We set off just before 6am this morning knowing we had a tough day ahead, the gravel roads soon turned into great offroad sections as we headed off into the open desert mountains on some more very vague overgrown trails. We encountered our second locked gate of the trip, but the detour was a mere rewind for 100 ft then drop down to a creek crossing before rejoining our track & heading into the wild yonder.

We basically crossed one range of hills, dropped into a huge valley then climbed back up into the next range of hills & dropped into the next valley. On each high point we had a trial to pass today, it's almost like fate was saying it's not time to leave Nevada yet boys!!

Geoff had a puncture on our first pass, he'd missed a turning, headed up into the hills with Brian hot on his heels, Kevin set off too, but realised fairly quickly & turned around to pick up the actual trail which descended into a great little valley & out into the hot open plains below, I'd waited for 10 mins then decided to follow Kevin down thinking that the boys had continued on to another descent trail, it turns out that Geoff had a rear tyre puncture from a nail & needed the pump which was in my panniers. So I retraced the valley climb upto Geoff, blew his tyre up & we all descended with a little side trip for a close up inspetion of the bushes for Geoff... Brian's KTM has decided it needed a new sidestand, it's bending way too far in the wrong direction at the moment & dropping the bike into the dirt, not great!!

Once down in the valley, it was hot, very hot, the dust over the last 3 days has been getting worse, it was hanging in the air all day today, you could see where we'd been for an hour after we'd passed by!! We were very glad to get back up high where it was a bit cooler, but that's when Kevin's DR decided to have a rest for an hour or so... Geoff & Brian had done most of the ascent to this last ridge whilst Kevin & myself were getting hot & bothered in the dust trying to sort out the none running bike. Geoff & Brian returned back to us & Geoff soon had the problem sorted with a new spark plug & a bit of a carb strip down & rebuild.

Back under way we did the ascent then dropped down into the valley below to get into Denio Junction, a tiny place which we thought had fuel, it turns out you have to ride 25 miles north to another tiny place called Fields in Oregon, which is a cool little place serving fuel, food & beer with a cute lass working behind the counter & a man with a pistol on is hip... which one was more dangerous I'll leave to your imagination!! :-)

Once we refuelled, we headed back to Denio & its bar... a bit of planning for the next few days ensued over a couple of beers, including ordering tyres for both Geoff & my bike as we've both been riding on nearly bald tyres for a few days now & it's pretty scary on the old gravel roads!!!

Anyhoo, not much distance covered, but a great day had by all anyway... tomorrow is another day & we'll see where we end up this time!! Oh & we met another cowboy today, pissed as he was Kevin managed to get a picture of his boots & spurs!!